2024 Annual Letter and Summary for BOS & Members

The Middlesex County Museum & Historical Society, Inc. is both a museum and a

visitor center in partnership with the Museums of Middlesex. We also support the

exhibits in the historic clerk’s office and provide special educational opportunities

there. Our visitors are seeking information about the social history of our peninsula,

our area in general and sometimes, specifically their ancestors. This year we’ve had

visitors from across the United States, Europe, Canada and South Africa.

The museum supports the education of our local students through hands-on

experience with local historical records and objects. Over 500 students visited our

museum along with outings to our historical courthouse and clerk’s office.

In 2024, our museum provided educational opportunities for our community by

hosting various events. In February, board member Bessida Cauthorne White gave a

lecture entitled, “Recognizing and Sharing Family Treasures.” In the same month the

Rev. Dr. Robert W. Prichard hosted a zoom discussion of “The Bottles of Middlesex,

”

an exploration of role of citizens of Middlesex County in the patent medicine

industry of the late 19th and the early 20th century.

In May, an event was held at Millmont, built in 1910, to share the joy of preserving

our older structures. The museum led the effort for a Virginia historic highway

marker for Antioch Baptist Church, the oldest African American Church in Middlesex

County. The marker was co-sponsored with Antioch, and a marker dedication

ceremony in August was attended by more than 100 persons.

In October, the barn at Rosegill Plantation served as the perfect setting for our

hosting Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey, Historic Stratford Hall’s authority on Arthur Lee,

the author of an Address on Slavery (1767), which may be the earliest denunciation

of slavery by a Virginia planter, and one of the American diplomats who negotiated

the “The Treaty of Alliance” (1778) that cemented French support for the American

Revolution. At the end of his life Lee lived at Lansdowne in Saluda. At this event, the

museum’s Annual Preservation Award was presented to Colonel (retired) A. B.

Gravatt in honor of his wife Diane Gravatt, who was the driving force behind

Lansdowne being designated as a National Historic Landmark and placed on the

National Register of Historic Places.On November 17, renowned historian Ed Ayres, formerly of the Jamestown-

Yorktown Foundation, presented a very enlightening program on the topic of “The

Middlesex Resolves,” local resolutions adopted in July 1774 that helped ignite the

spark of the American Revolution. Board member Robert (Bob) Prichard has written

a teacher’s guide for “The Middlesex Resolves” and a play by that title that will be

presented by our high school students in 2025 to commemorate the adoption of the

Resolves.

Our museum has an ongoing connection with citizens to screen and preserve objects,

documents, and photographs that relate to our local history. These materials

support the public’s quest for ancestral information. The records of our past define

who we were, who we are, and who we want to be. Finally, the Museum &

Historical Society has supported the establishment of Saluda Historic District as a

way to increase public awareness of the historic value of our historical courthouse

and its surroundings.

Memberships, donations, sponsorships, and grants are very important aspects of our

museum’s funding, and each very important to our future so that we can ensure the

preservation of the history of our county.